User:Eleanorg/gradProposal/2012-09-18

The Dissolute Image

what

The Dissolute Image is a speculative, poetic hosting technique. It enables the distributed hosting of a banned image on the 2.0 platform/s from which it has been excluded.

The Dissolute Image is a single webpage in which tiny image files from across the web are embedded - eventually making up a larger image. Each participant is invited to post a single pixel (image file) on their own blog or social network account and to submit the URL where they've posted it. As more and more pixels are posted by participants, a recognizable image starts to emerge.

how

The Dissolute Image begins with a single image file which has been banned. A script first splits the image up into its constituent pixels, each of which is made into a database entry. Initially, The Dissolute Image homepage appears blank. Through another page on this site, visitors are offered a pixel which has not yet been 'adopted', and given the corresponding image file. When they have posted this image file (for example on their Facebook page) and submitted the URL, a note is made against that pixel in the database and the image file is embedded in The Dissolute Image homepage. If it is deleted from their Facebook page, the image will disappear from The Dissolute Image, and come up again for adoption.

why

This project sprung from an interest in 2.0 censorship, as an example of the problem with user-generated content being hosted on centralized servers beyond users' control. This censorship also raises the question of how community-controlled hosting should address this issue, and whether DIY hosts are in practice any more willing than corporate platforms to allow free speech at the expense of their own tastes or values.

The project's intention is to attract those who oppose censorship, and challenge them with the possibility that their solidarity may be supporting objectionable content. On a formal level, the project realized a long-standing desire on my part to deconstruct a cultural artefact to the smallest possible visual unit, and revel in the sheer scale of the painstaking endeavour to re-construct it. Thus, conceptually and formally, the project explores my wider concerns with democratic participation vs/and/as hierarchical power, the individual's role in the multitude, and the difficulties encountered in attempting to form consensus.